


Mohn Lied

by Star_Tsar



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Angst, Drama, Family Secrets, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-01-16 13:03:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12343233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Tsar/pseuds/Star_Tsar
Summary: Brief vignettes and explorations of Professor Ludwig Von Drake's past, including his connection with the Third Reich, Operation Paperclip and the American space program. His evolving emotions and morals are explored, as well as how this affects his abilities to relate to other people. We also catch a glimpse of Webby's family tree.





	1. Gossweinstein

Mohn Lied

or

Deutsches Requiem für Brüder

Professor Ludwig Von Drake gazed out of his laboratory’s window, smiling. The untamed blue expanse of the sky crashed against the idyllic white shores of exploding clouds, aery spirits beholden first to the golden breath of the sun—an opera testifying in gales and whispers to the wonder of nature’s interplay; and it all occurred in front of him daily, requesting only that he cast his gaze upward toward heaven (something the Professor did every day of his life).

Through this violent threnody of the sky’s intercourse, the Professor was somehow able to find peace amidst the chaotic scene in his lab. His benefactor, Scrooge McDuck, was having a shouting match with his intemperately tempered nephew Donald, and the four children they’d brought to tour the operations at the facility were only adding to the noise. One of the boys—the red one—was arguing with the girl, Webbigail (with whom Von Drake had a passing acquaintance), and the other two boys were providing running commentary to either argument, to their own amusement and theirs only.

“Professor Von Drake! You are… a man of science!” Huey wrung his red cap in his hands, addressing the amused old Austrian before him as though some great oration were to follow. As Webby crossed her arms, frustrated with her friend’s obstinate skepticism, Huey continued, “Please explain to _Webbigail,_ ” he pointed at her, “the _physical_ _infeasibility_ of a thousand-pound dragon’s wings beating fast enough to _displace the air_ required for it to achieve lift-off.”

“Well,” the Professor began, rubbing his beak with one hand and land looking up, “I suppose I could spend a few minutes modelling the endothermic metabolic rates of a megalithic pterosaur, which would of course be predicated on it’s greater anatomical structure and substructure,” he looked down at Huey, “and theorize on the practical ability of this creature to flap its wings until it flies away, hopefully without its blood boiling until the head explodes.” Ludwig glanced over at Webby, smirking, and said, “Or… I could examine the subtext of this question, and realize it’s not an inquiry into the physical processes of zoological phenomenon, but the latest product in a series of squabbles between friends over cynicism in the guise of rationality.”

“You’re right, Professor Von Drake,” Webby began, smiling as she sensed vindication of the horizon. “It is!” she continued, before being interrupted by Huey’s hand getting pressed into her face.

“But surely, Professor, it’s better to be open-minded but skeptical, than to believe everything you hear just because you heard it,” Huey pleaded.

The Professor set his arms akimbo and bent over slightly, looking at the duckling, “I think that, if you were truly scientific and open-minded, you wouldn’t practice this ad hoc, selective skepticism.” Ludwig stood up straight, adjusting his spectacles and again looked up, saying, “The originators of philosophical academic skepticism—that is, the philosophers of the middle academy, who studied the magician Pyrrho’s ideas on the subject of ideas, believed that the only knowledge that could be known was the knowledge that no knowledge could be known!” exclaimed Von Drake, waddling over to face his white board and flipping it over. “That is, of course, disregarding the Platonic ideas on the nature of opinion and it’s ability to come nearer to truth or falsehood, but that doesn’t detract from my argument in this instance,” prattled the Professor, scribbling some shapes and greek letters on the board as Huey and Webby looked confusedly at one another.

“Ask Feyerabend, he’ll tell you!” continued Von Drake, “If he weren’t dead, I mean, that there is no universal methodological rule that might lead to an objective understanding of the universe, and that science is just a puerile attempt to reach an answer without all the relevant information—and is really no better at grasping any hypothetical physical truth than myth or magic.” The Professor stopped writing and turned back toward the ducklings to show what he’d drawn on the board: a series of Euclidean geometrical objects and abstract algebraic formulae meant to illustrate their individual topological structures. “Even mathematics, regarded by Aristotle to be the first science, and by modern scholarship to be all that has any business being real, is only a quantical approximation of a vague, subjective reality—if it can even be called a reality!”

Around the time Professor Von Drake finished his epistemological spiel, Webby had an amazed and intrigued expression plastered on her face, and Huey looked terrified.

“B-but, Professor!” Huey put his cap back on and held it down, “That’s not a very scientific thing to say!”

“Oh, you little rutabaga, it’s one of the most scientific things I’ve ever said! It’s superscientific!” exacted the Professor, intentionally getting a little carried away, before Scrooge (seemingly finished arguing with his nephew) called the children to come finish the tour of the facility. Huey and Webby thanked Von Drake and stepped out of the laboratory with Donald as Mr. McDuck strutted up to the Professor.

“Thank you for your time, Ludwig, _I_ ** _know_** _it’s valuable._ ” Scrooge said, shaking the Professor’s hand before leaving to join his family. Von Drake hobbled over to his desk to resume his paperwork, throwing himself in a heap on the finely upholstered chair. He found it difficult, however, after the excitement, and couldn't help but to stare at the black math on the whiteboard. Resting his enormous, dolichocephalic head on one hand, he pondered those halcyon days when he first began to meditate on the mystery of epistemics. A few minutes passed, and with his eyes still fixed on the glyphs he’d scrawled, he began to mumble,

“It is not the percept… which is described by these models, vectors and variables, but the perception. Do you understand, Ludwig?” asked Wilhelm. “They only symbolize an approximate, subjective reality via the illusion of phenomenal quantity and proportion,” Wilhelm pointed at the white chalk drawings he’d made on Ludwig’s blackboard.

“That isn’t a terribly scientific way to look at things, Wilhelm,” Ludwig teased. Wilhelm had become a very good friend to him, and a mentor, since their days working together began. Around this time every morning, before research would seriously begin, the two of them would sit in Ludwig’s laboratory and discuss matters of the universe. They came from very disparate backgrounds, socially and intellectually, but became good friends once they’d discovered one-another’s gifts.

“Unbelievable!” screamed Wilhelm, oblivious to his friend’s sarcasm, “In the year nineteen-hundred and thirty-nine, that this man to whom I’ve been giving all my secrets cannot look passed these, these _vulturous_ prejudices!” Wilhelm was easily riled, and given to sudden (if predictable) emotional outbursts when it came to his ideas.

“Calm Down! You loon! I’m only teasing you,” Ludwig interrupted Wilhelm’s tirade, as he often had to, and it calmed him down almost immediately. Doctor Wilhelm Vanderquack was a strange duck, unable to interact with most people at any social capacity, and Ludwig often wondered how he got along before he met him. Ostensibly, Wilhelm was a fellow physicist—but from what Ludwig had been able to gather, Wilhelm previously worked as a stage illusionist, scraping by performing feats of prestidigitation at children’s parties, but in secret was a different kind of magician; a great student of ancient philosophy and mathematics, and also a dabbler among the so-called occult sciences. “And don’t start throwing around insults like ‘vulturous’, some people take that kind of thing seriously,” finished Von Drake.

“Well, I’m sorry, Ludwig, but it **is** vulturous,” Wilhelm crossed his arms, pouting, “It is vulturous to try and sow the seeds of discord against two arts which should work harmoniously—for the glory of Deutschland, you know.” Around the early thirties, the secret police picked up Wilhelm in Berlin on suspicion of masonic involvement. But, upon learning of his aspergic genius and occultic proclivities, the Reich set Wilhelm to work as a mystic—but what that entailed, Ludwig could never ascertain.

Ludwig chuckled, “Oh please, Wilhelm, don’t start about Deutschland. You’re a Nederlander-”

Wilhelm pointed at his compatriot, “I’m a Norman! Frisian on my mother’s side, which is where-”

“ _Vanderquack!_ ” Ludwig retorted, amid Wilhelm’s protests that it’s not Dutch, but a nobleman’s name, “And I’m an Austrian, so keep the Deutschland talk for the soldaten.” Ludwig always saw himself as being above the Reich’s ‘warrior caste’, although technically an SS man himself, but never doubted that they all worked singularly toward the same ultimate goal—the strange and glorious new aeon he often romanticized more than any military man (in private, of course).

“Well, we are both brothers in the Anatid race, Ludwig, under the new order—the Deutsch Reich. And we work for the common weal—nay, the edification of all mankind! Under this sign, ‘in hoc signo vinces,’ **the crooked cross** ! _O, Constantine_!” proclaimed Wilhelm, before going off on a tangent of ideological rhetoric punctuated with ancient greek and ecclesiastical latin phrases, which Ludwig largely ignored.

Wilhelm, despite his general adherence only to the great philosophers of yore, was a great admirer of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Spengler—and as such was a great believer in nazist soteriology, and consequently a proponent of phenomenal amoralism to accomplish a greater good. He was always the first, between the two, to reiterate to everyone the necessity of the empire’s acts against the unrighteous.

Ludwig was himself also an admirer of all the great German existentialists but, having been raised a catholic, was not prepared to renounce every idea he’d come to possess on the nature of good and evil as they existed on earth—but was more than prepared to concede that extreme sacrifices must be made to come closer to the absolute good, as it must exist in heaven, even if it meant the commission of earthly evils.

“That is true, Wilhelm!” said Ludwig Von Drake a little loudly, interrupting Wilhelm’s prognostications. “It is true, that we are brothers,” Ludwig grinned at his friend and grabbed one of Wilhelm’s hands, which hung gesticulating in the air during his disjointed, but majestic sermon. Ludwig pulled the other duck into a hug and kissed either cheek in the Austrian fashion, before pushing him away and saying, “Now! We must attend the morning’s roundtable and set to work soon; are you prepared?”

Doctor Ludwig Von Drake was the head of a secret research and development team stationed in the ‘ruins’ of castle Gossweinstein in the foreboding hills of Bavaria, southeast of Bamberg. There, he’d direct the talents of several chemists, physicists and every variety of engineer toward whatever goal the Reich mandated. Such operations were not necessarily common, but highly organized and numerous. Each of these missions were tempered by the esoteric knowledge of each operation’s resident occultist, hand-picked by the powers that be to both aid the research and also balance the power of each team’s director. In Ludwig’s case, fortunately, this wizard came in the form of Wilhelm Vanderquack, (who was fond of calling himself a superscientist rather than an occultist), and like all mystics in his position was outfitted with a putative doctorate in physics from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics (the same school Ludwig _actually attended_ , possessing a diploma signed by Professor Einstein himself).

Most of the relationships between directors and occultists devolved into petty squabbles and power plays which ultimately hindered any given operation, and resultantly harmed the Reich; but Ludwig and Wilhelm had something special, seeing each other as brothers and understanding one another enough that they could translate their ideas from science to mysticism and vice-versa using the underlying philosophical principles. Over the years, Ludwig came to comprehend physics through a more epistemic and ontological lense, thanks to Wilhelm’s mentorship; and Wilhelm learned to render his ideas on reality through the symbolism of modern mathematics, and really came to resemble something of a physicist under Ludwig’s tutelage.

“I am prepared, Brother Ludwig!” affirmed Wilhelm, recovering from his friend’s theatrical act of affection and giving him the roman salute. This was a bizarre little game they’d sometimes play, that kind of charade endemic to close friendship, where Ludwig and Wilhelm would pretend to be worked up into frenzies, exaggerating their own mannerisms so as to seem ridiculous. This was especially easy to do under the pretext of being overly patriotic Germans (while never betraying or undermining the essential ideals, of course.) “Gott mit uns! Herr Ludwig!”

Ludwig threw off his spectacles, continuing the little show. “Ha! Wunderbare!” He slammed his fist against the window jamb, and turned to peer out of his laboratory to the castle courtyard below, where the schutzstaffel men assigned to the operation were gathering. “Wunderbare, Brother Wilhelm!” he continued, a little less forcefully, and looked up to see his own reflection in the window pane, with Wilhelm behind him, goose-stepping and screaming the libretto to _Deutschland uber alles_ for comedic effect. Ludwig laughed, and then he smiled, but his eyes were drawn back to his reflection, almost hypnotically.

Ludwig stared at his reflection for awhile, mesmerized, and then the youthful grin, the surety of purpose, the hope for a new dawn, it all began to fade away and scatter—like daylight through some terrible prism, it all scattered and gave way to it’s barest elements, before decaying. His skin wrinkled, his hair greyed, his gaze dimmed and his smile faded until, finally, he beheld his aged physiognomy through milky-white cataracted eyes.

Worst of all, the scene of two young men, two true friends, became a tragic portrait of one old man, alone.

Professor Von Drake looked up at the sky, the brilliant cacophony of nature’s minglings now reduced to a homogenous sheet of grey, overcast clouds. He turned to look behind him, but could not even see Wilhelm’s ghost. Ludwig hung his head, and tried to remember if his brother ever spoke of heaven.


	2. Witzenhausen

The young Ludwig rolled up one sleeve and sat down in the dry, enameled bathtub. Reaching in his trouser pocket, he produced a long black case, and rummaged in the rest of his pockets searchingly until he glanced at his coat resting on the cistern. Grabbing the rim of the tub to stabilize himself, he reached into his coat’s pocket and withdrew a bottle of diacetylmorphine. With a thud Ludwig fell back in the tub and carefully pulled open the case to peep the syringe therein. After carefully drawing the opiate into the syringe, he tested the needle’s structural soundness with a flick, then squirted a small portion into the air to prevent any renegade air-bubbles from giving him a stroke. With a blank expression, he stuck himself subcutaneously and inoculated the substance.

Ludwig gingerly returned the instrument to it’s case and snapped it shut, and also secreted the bottle back in his coat. Then, slipping his spectacles into his shirt pocket, he drew up his knees and slid down onto his back, eyes shut.

Ludwig and Wilhelm had been living together in the backwater village of Witzenhausen since the middle of nineteen-forty-five (it was now february of forty-six), sharing a cramped apartment while the Americans were at work doctoring their records, expunging any links to Nazi involvement and falsifying employment histories. Witzenhausen was in the American zone—one of the slices of territory the Allied nations had carved into the Grossgermanisches Reich like some gruesome trophy after the war ended—and the two physicists, like a great many German scientists, were dispatched to the village after their _debriefing_ at Kransberg Castle (called DUSTBIN by the Americans) as a part of Operation Overcast. The idea behind Overcast, as Ludwig understood it, was to to steal away all of Deutschland’s great scientific minds and further vulgarize the memory of the new order. Nominally, though, repurposing the Reich’s former scientists was for the good of the U.S., as opposed to the further degradation of a once great nation.

Wilhelm and Ludwig had managed to stay together through the entire humiliating dance of capture, transfer, and interrogation. But the real struggle was the seeing the rapine of all their highest ideals before their very eyes—the destruction of the Reich, the loss of the war, the death of the Fuhrer. More than once, Ludwig had thought about taking his pistol in one hand and ending it all, and Wilhelm had also, but the brothers kept one another sane when it seemed all the world had gone just the opposite.

Now, in the tub, Ludwig didn’t mind the idea of leaving the fatherland for America. He knew that a new dawn didn’t await him in the United States (and in fact he wondered if the sun would ever rise again), but in Germany he’d only be haunted by the ghosts of the new age. At least in America, he might be able to forget.

Ludwig opened his eyes slowly and raised one hand. Looking at it, his expression was blank, but he felt some satisfaction at the numbness. The duck stood up and stepped out of the bathtub, rolling down his sleeve and looking in the mirror. As he buttoned his cuff together, Ludwig opened his mouth and examined one portion of his gums very carefully. During his detainment after initial capture, a couple of American GIs with something to prove knocked two of his teeth out; both anterior premolars adjacent to one another. The gums seemed to be healing properly, and he had made his peace with the circumstances. Ludwig slipped on his coat and exited the bathroom.

The single corridor of the small apartment was, like the rest of the place, littered with what remained of Ludwig and Wilhelm’s mortal possessions: mainly books on a range of arcane and recondite subjects, along with notebooks soaked with ink in the form of sloppily written formulae and models. The predominant way the two men dealt with their grief over the war’s end was by throwing themselves into their work in physics. Wilhelm’s phony diploma from the KWI was enough to fool American intelligence into labelling him a highly skilled scientist, but thanks to his studies with Ludwig his mathematical and scientific abilities were more than enough to justify this status. Likewise, Wilhelm’s initiation of Ludwig into the higher mysteries developed Von Drake’s understanding of natural phenomenon years ahead of what science alone could achieve. Together, they spent almost every waking moment collaborating on theories which they were sure would win them great adulation in the United States.

Ludwig buttoned his coat (an unfortunate necessity in the unheated, barely insulated hovel) and stepped into the cozy kitchen to see Wilhelm sitting at the booth against the wall, painting a breakfast sausage with mustard. As they greeted one another, Ludwig noticed, in front of the oven, the ‘ _housekeeper_ ’ had come early: Matilda McDuck, a Scottish-american volunteer especially stationed in Witzenhausen during the final stages of the war, and who’d been made to stay in ‘West Germany’ after the end. Moonlighting as a housekeeper, she and Ludwig had taken a shine to each other, and every other day she would come to the fellows’ apartment ostensibly to clean. She’d also sometimes help the two of them with their english (they’d already taught themselves most of the syntax and vocabulary, but Ludwig would pretend not to know some things).

“Here you go, Ludwig,” Matilda intoned through her teasing brogue, handing the physicist a chipped plate heaped with piping hot breakfast foods. Ludwig looked down at the comestibles in a haze, then back up at Matilda smiling at him warmly. He grabbed the plate, one of his hands caressing Matilda’s own as he took it. Ludwig found it difficult to look her in the eye, and so his stare travelled lazily back down to the food. Even in her winter attire, Matilda’s physique caught Ludwig’s furtive attention. Then, remembering himself, his gaze shot down to the floor.

“D-... Danke, Frau Matilda,” Ludwig said, shyly, before he felt her hand on his chin, delicately lifting his head. Her warm look had been replaced by one of caring concern as she locked eyes with him.

“Ludwig, are you…?” she began, narrowing her eyes.

Sensing the root of her concern, Ludwig quickly answered, “Mein mouth, it, uh, mein mouth h-hurts.” He opened his mouth wide, pointing with one hand at where his teeth had been ripped out, and almost dropping the food.

Matilda didn’t believe that was entirely the case, as the wound had almost entirely healed, but she didn’t want to argue, so she asked him, “Can you eat?” and beckoned him to sit next to Wilhelm.

“Ja, I can- Ja, I can eat,” Ludwig affirmed, setting the plate on the table with a clang and crumpling next to Wilhelm, never taking his eyes off Matilda’s.

“Alright, that’s good. Would you like some milk with it?” She asked, a little disappointed in him. Ludwig’s mind was starting to wander, so he only nodded his confirmation and began to eat.

While he was clumsily biting into a slice of toast smeared with something-or-another, he looked to his left to see Wilhelm awkwardly cutting into a tough bratwurst. Wilhelm’s right hand was moving very stiffly, and Ludwig could tell it was hurting him that morning. It was an injury that occurred only a week or so after the war, when Wilhelm learned of what the Dutch resistance were doing to former Nederlandsche SS—lynching collaborators, shaving womens’ heads and publicly humiliating them; Wilhelm was so incensed that he punched a brick wall and broke the bones in his hand. Even then, he continued raging until Ludwig physically restrained him. He went on for days claiming he was fine until Ludwig had to beg him to visit a physician, and by then the bones had started to heal improperly.

By the time Ludwig thought to offer his help, Wilhelm had already finished and had resumed eating. Matilda set a glass of cool milk in front of Ludwig, and he silently mouthed the word, “Danke.” She patted him on the back and walked to the sink, starting to clean the dishes she’d dirtied in preparing breakfast.

A few minutes passed, until Wilhelm had cleared his plate of food (save a few scraps) and crossed his utensils on it before pushing it to the far side of the table. He reached over and grabbed that morning’s newspaper from the seat adjacent to the booth. Ludwig, who was picking at his own half eaten plate of food, glanced over to see him unfold the paper and cross his legs, reading it. Ludwig looked back down at his plate, a single fork hovering over it in his hand. He wasn’t really hungry.

Ludwig set his fork down on the plate and slumped over, resting his head on Wilhelm’s shoulder. As Wilhelm looked over, then shifted his weight to better support him, Ludwig closed his eyes.


	3. Huntsville - Part Un

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, we're going to see something that really irks me. The Professor's official name is Ludwig Von Drake (notice von being capitalized). This is incorrect, as the Eastern European "von" denotes someone's being "of" a location or family, and traditionally it is not capitalized in actual names. Here, I use an actual name containing von and, naturally, I capitalize it correctly. The astute reader will see this contrast with Ludwig's full name which, seemingly contrarily, I have also capitalized "correctly" (in keeping with the official spelling).

"And for my drink, I’ll just have some pep, please,” Donald said to the garcon, not quite grasping the scale of the restaurant to which his Uncles had brought him. The waiter replied something unintelligible in an obscene french accent and snatched Donald’s menu before walking inside, toward the kitchen. Sitting around a small, tastefully crafted table on the enclosed deck of the Paradis Perdu, Scrooge, Donald and the Professor each looked out-of-place, in their own ways. Von Drake, though he knew little and cared less about Scrooge and Donald’s relationship, was fairly certain they’d only invited him on this little jaunt so they wouldn’t have to directly speak to one another. The more frightening prospect, however, was that (knowing he possessed a degree in psychology) they were expecting him to mediate some reconciliation of theirs. This seemed less-and-less to be the case, however, as an uncomfortable silence descended after the garcon left with their orders.

Von Drake’s high powered ears picked up the sound of footfalls on the sidewalk below the deck, on the quiet saturday afternoon. Eager extricate himself from viewing the awkward scene, if even only for a moment, he turned to look at the source of the steps. He saw a decrepit old bearded vulture (probably around his own age, chronologically), happily strolling down the path and holding what must have been his grandson’s hand; probably having a nice little day on the town after temple. Turning back to the table, he saw not much had changed between Scrooge and Donald.

“I don’t suppose you can frequent establishments like this very often, eh, Donald? Not with those hellion nephews of yours,” prodded Von Drake, trying to banish the silence with what he assumed a normal person might say.

Donald was leaning back in his seat, smirking as though he were about to retort, but just as he opened his mouth Scrooge chimed in, “They’re your nephews, too, Ludwig.”

Von Drake’s face was emotionless for a moment, then he grinned and started to mumble a reply, but he stopped short before any words could be formed. Then he shook his head and chuckled nervously. He and Matilda had been divorced years before Donald was even born, but the McDuck clan still treated him like family.

“You can’t get out that easily, Uncle Ludwig,” teased Donald, knowing what Von Drake was going to say.

Von Drake, still smiling, took off his glasses and held them aloft. “I know your games; you just think you can get me to babysit.”

They each laughed, though Von Drake couldn’t tell if he’d actually made a joke or if they were only doing so out of courtesy. Soon after, though, the table again descended into a pregnant silence. After a certain amount of time passed, both Scrooge and Donald reached for their glasses of water (as if to excuse themselves from speaking), but having done so contemporaneously, they could only stare awkwardly at one another. This amused Von Drake a great deal more than it would have an ordinary person, but he was adept at hiding that sort of thing.

After a second, they both seemed to have decided that Donald should be the one to drink, and as he did so Scrooge turned to Von Drake, saying, “You know, Ludwig, there’s going to be a halloween party at the money bin, R&D and everyone; I’m sure they’d get a kick out of your attendance.” Scrooge quickly added, “The festivities will be coming out of their pockets of course, so you’ll have to chip-in.”

The Professor politely shook his head, not being a fan of intimate social gatherings. Donald, setting down his glass, said, “We’re going to bring the boys, too.”

“Aye, the lads,” Scrooge affirmed. It occurred to Von Drake that their joined efforts to convince him to do something (that he didn’t want to do) was probably a front to divert their attention from one another, but then something else occurred to him.

“And the little fraulein, Webbigail?” queried Von Drake, and both other ducks confirmed his suspicion. “Ah, that is good,” Von Drake continued, “Otherwise, you know, a lonely holiday might remind a child about their, uh, parentage—or lack thereof.”

Von Drake didn’t realize how tone deaf the statement was until he saw both Scrooge and Donald’s faces contort into something resembling severe discomfort. Donald took another long swig of water, in an attempt to drown the rising emotion, but Scrooge inwardly pondered how his former brother-in-law could have learned that Webby didn’t know her parents.

The faux pas itself was bad enough, but Von Drake internally despaired when he realized it was ushering in a third era of interminable silence at the table. Unable to stand it, he looked away (very casually, though) and tried to focus on the events of the street below. It was desert, devoid of any intelligent life and incurably boring—until he saw a familiar model of car turn onto the street.

“Oh, look.”

Mass-produced halloween decorations whizzed by the window of the studebaker sedan as it lazily coasted down the roads of the Huntsville suburb. The sour warmth of that morning’s sacramental wine clung to Ludwig’s throat as he gripped the steering wheel, and a radio presenter loudly croaked the statistical aftermath of the Korean War’s latest slaughter. Some meaningless struggle over a scrap of land on a hill, melancholically labelled  _ Heartbreak Ridge _ . Matilda reached over from the passenger seat and adjusted the frequency, and a different but equally grating news presenter started to prattle off headlines. She and Ludwig had been wed only a year and a half—the ceremony having taken place in a little adobe chapel in El Paso—and the honeymoon period had more-or-less ended. They were both content in their quiet domestic situation, and life in the middle-class Alabama neighborhood was much preferable to the quonset huts to which they’d been relegated in Fort Bliss.

The radio’s volume vacillated momentarily, with the sound of rustling paper and unintelligible mumbles emanating from the device before the newscaster’s voice returned louder than before. He said, “And in news a little closer to home, Huntsville's own Redstone Arsenal continues to be the site of the United States’ most exciting advances in rocketry-”

“Ludwig, they’re talking about where you work,” chirped Matilda, in case her husband was lost in thought (as he often tended to be).

The broadcast continued, “Thanks to the prodigious, almost  _ superhuman _ abilities of Physicist Wernher von Braun and the two-hundred scientists and engineers under him.”

“Aw, sweetie,” Matilda placed a hand on Ludwig’s back, smiling as he raised an inquisitive brow at the broadcaster’s words.

“B-but, it is on the wishes of the station’s ownership that we would like to remind the listening public… that Doctor Bra- Doctor von Braun,” the broadcaster’s faux-midwest accent slipped into his (presumably) native Southern at the misread, and Matilda, a little nervous, slid her hand off Ludwig. “That Doctor von Braun and the majority of his German scientists were at one time members of the Nazi Party-” Matilda reached for the radio, but Ludwig’s hand shot over the dial, blocking her. “And were each high ranking members of the Waffen SS, p…  _ Probably complicit in the mass extermination of millions of ethnic vultures,” _ Ludwig turned off the radio.

The remainder of the drive home proceeded in silence. Matilda, a normally very confident and outgoing woman, kept her hands on her lap and fixed her gaze out of the passenger-side window. For her own sanity, whenever this thing came up, she’d silently assure herself that  _ her  _ Ludwig was not capable of such inhumanity. He was too sweet, too kind, too pacifistic and quick to acquiesce—and then she’d think to herself that, if he  _ were _ complicit in these acts, then the  _ real _ perpetrators had taken advantage of him. However, this came with a slew of fallacies, not the least of which was that  **_every_ ** German scientist brought to America had said they were ‘being taken advantage of’ or something to that effect. But Matilda banished these thoughts, as quickly as she could. Ludwig was a good husband; a good man.

She tried to focus her thoughts on the halloween party she was planning to throw, but this led her to recall Ludwig’s timid protests whenever she brought it up to him; and this in turn lead her back to the subject broached by the broadcast. Ludwig disliked social events, from upscale galas to informal get-togethers on the block; he couldn’t stand them. He was always (ever since she knew him, anyway) a quiet and reserved man. Only speaking if spoken to, and even then limiting his responses to single sentences, if he couldn’t reduce it to a monosyllabic answer. Sometimes, though, if the subject of conversation were something he considered especially high and lofty, like philosophy or mathematics, he could be coerced into elaborate lectures and dissertations on the spot, sometimes going on for hours. And if they went on long enough, he could even become boisterous and extroverted.

During such rare occasions, Matilda would incite him to perform feats of the intellect before whatever assembly they were entertaining. With an eidetic memory, Ludwig would memorize the pages of phone directories and, having someone call out a number, recite the contents of that page perfectly. One of their friends, who was a very skilled accountant, once brought in an adding machine and was astounded that Ludwig could mentally calculate complex arithmetic problems faster than the device. Though he could very seldom be impelled to these displays, they had made him an adored member of whatever community in which he and Matilda lived. Everyone agreed that he was a genius, and it made his wife proud.

Whenever she saw Ludwig speak to a child, and he was fond of children so he went out of his way to converse with them whenever a parent brought their progeny to a get-together, Matilda noticed that he could speak to the little boy or girl as if he were their equal. Like a god lowering himself to a mortal plane. She often wondered if he applied this ability when speaking to everyone else.

It was incontrovertible: her husband, Doctor Ludwig Von Drake, really was a genius. But with this rumination came a deeper, more frightening truth; at least within the overall context of this train of thought. 

She glanced over at him, his hands very calmly wrapped around the steering wheel, wearing that same blank expression, that same thousand-yard stare. Whenever he’d walk into a room, or come to bed, or really at any time, Matilda would ask him why he looked that way. He’d look at her for a moment, as if he didn’t understand, then he’d smile and say he forgot to put on a different face. Then, for a while, he’d make sure to emote cartoonishly whenever she was around. Matilda wanted to believe this was some intricate joke he liked to play, but deep down she knew he really had to put effort into looking like a normal person.

Matilda couldn't stop herself; no amount of protest could halt her mind racing toward the truth. It all sounded like some surreal nightmare, or a distasteful piece of science fiction when she first heard of it, but the proof sat beside her. Ludwig’s preternatural intelligence, his supreme comprehension and total recall—his pervasive lack of emotion (or at least any ability to display it); it truly was as if he were a member of some higher species, some new breed of beings superior. It all amounted to complete lucidity, a mind nearing omniscience. Ludwig’s involvement with  _ what happened, over there _ was no coincidence, no cosmic accident. 

Ludwig was the übermensch. The emotionless superman, the first generation of the new Anatid master race.

Matilda was starting to frighten herself.

But this was all just ridiculous. Matilda chastised her subversive thoughts, mentally flagellating herself for even considering that this sweet, timid man could have possibly taken part in such a cruel, heinous crime. She did her best to herself that this baseless speculation was symptomatic of a deeper, psychological issue she must have had—some self-destructive complex (that’s what she figured Ludwig would think, anyway).

Matilda glanced back over Ludwig, now again starting to very much resemble a mere mortal man; a regular, suburban working stiff—maybe a little brainier than the rest. She wondered what she must’ve looked like, this battle raging in her psyche, but saw in the side view mirror that she was still just an ordinary housewife. Matilda really hated it when she did this. She just wanted so desperately to be happy.

It never occurred to her to try and talk about it to her husband.

Finally, Ludwig carefully careened the sedan onto the Von Drakes' driveway. The house had been recently built, like most in the neighborhood, in a mock usonian architectural style. It was two stories, but modest for the average physicist’s salary. As soon as the car stopped, Ludwig put on the parking brake and turned off the engine. They both sat there, just for a moment, before he unstrapped his seatbelt and stepped out of the sedan. Shutting the door with a metallic thud, he sauntered around the front and over to the passenger door; opening it for his wife. Matilda stepped out, herself, and together they walked to the front door. After a short excursion back to the car, Ludwig returned with his keys and unlocked it. Matilda pecked his cheek and they stepped inside.

As his wife made her way to the upstairs master bedroom, so she could change from her sunday best into something more suburban, Ludwig stood in the living room adjacent to the vestibule, staring out of the window and pacing with his arms akimbo. After some contemplation, he called up to her, “Matilda?”

“Yes, dear?” her voice echoed down the stairway.

“I, uh, I think I’m going to go visit Wilhelm,” Ludwig had already started for the door.

“Alright, be back for lunch,” Matilda called back, just before she heard the door clack shut.

Ludwig stepped out onto the paved path from his stoop to the sidewalk, and stood there for awhile, putting his hands back on his hips. Then, glancing up at the sky, which was surprisingly blue for the time of year, he put his hands in his trouser pockets and started walking. Matilda slipped off her cardigan and looked out of the bedroom window to spy him waddling down the sidewalk, still wearing that blank, emotionless expression.


	4. Huntsville - Part Deux

Part Deux

Wilhelm (along with half the physicists and engineers working at Redstone Arsenal) only lived a couple blocks away in the Alabama suburb, and Ludwig didn’t mind a short ramble. The primitive automation of perambulation gave him a chance to get lost in thought; (thought being one of his few happy bastions left in a changing world).

Ludwig enjoyed a little stroll from hither, thither; but the cracked pavements of Huntsville, Alabama were a poor substitute for the rolling, verdant hills of his boyhood home in the Innviertel. Being born and raised in Altheim, a little village on the Mühlheimer Ache, Ludwig was sixteen before he even saw an automobile. But Von Drake didn’t allow his mind to linger on memories of home, anymore.

The cool October breeze shot over Ludwig’s head, blowing his overgrown, Titian red hair and leaving it clinging to his face. Exceptions were made for genius scientists, but his hair was getting long enough that nosier elements of the community might cast aspersions on his condition. Ludwig hated getting his hair cut—he used to do himself, or have Wilhelm do it, but now he had his darling Matilda to insist he have it done professionally, lest he compromise his career prospects.

In the Fatherland, it was a man’s abilities that decided his success in civilised society, not something as shallow as his personal fashion or proclivities. Eccentricity was looked upon with fascination, not disgust or revulsion—not the way these Americans look at it. Ernst Rohm, even, he was a homosexual (along with half of his Sturmabteilung) and still no one batted an eye—because he did his job well. In Deutschland, that was enough, thought Ludwig.

But in America, there was no outlet, no release, no personality allowed. A man’s work life was intricately tied to the domestic, woven into a noose around his neck, and if Ludwig were to stumble even once, it would strangle him.

A man’s personal life and his work life, in Deutschland—well, they might as well have been different men. At least, that’s how Ludwig saw it when he worked himself into one of these little episodes of mental seething. He did his best to think positively of the American way of life, and to think of all the opportunities this land had afforded him, even after working against it with the Reich; and Ludwig was a patient man, and peace loving, but not a saint—he could only suffer so many abuses before that primal pressure deep within built too high. The other former-Nazi scientists were too frightened to even mention their former work, much less discuss any repressed feelings they may have harbored over it; and it wasn’t as though he could speak to Matilda about his emotions over the new life foisted on him. She would just shut down whenever he so much as mentioned the old country.

It was as though the entire world had conspired to sculpt Ludwig’s ideas and beliefs into a single identity, then rip it all away and call him evil for it. Ludwig wasn’t allowed to be Ludwig anymore, or so he had felt, and all he could do was cram his anger and pain and torment away inside his overwrought mind. Only Wilhelm would listen to his woes, and try to ameliorate them—and he’d usually succeed, at least for awhile, in helping Ludwig to feel free again.

But Ludwig hadn’t reached Wilhelm’s house, yet. He stopped at a quiet crosswalk and reached into his inner coat pocket, producing a half-depleted matchbook and a single Old Gold. As far as Matilda knew, he’d stopped smoking back in El Paso. Ludwig struck the match and lit the cigarette, puffing on it thrice before crossing the street. He held the cigarette outward, between his thumb and index finger—in the German style. Even smoking reminded Ludwig of the chasmal disparity between himself and his new ‘countrymen.’ There was a time, though, and not long ago, that he’d have been picked on for holding his cigarettes in such a fashion. Now, his european idiosyncrasies were just disregarded, or spoken of in hushed tones.

Ludwig didn’t know what upset him more: being abused for his former allegiances, or being ignored for them.

The war in Korea had been raging for almost two years, now, and the popular culture of the United States seemed totally ignorant to the magnitude of it, only viewing the conflict in microcosmic terms relative to the overarching war on Communism. The American psyche confounded Ludwig; whenever they spoke of his war, one that threatened to ignite a Hegelian rejection of morality itself (the morality western history had been predicated on for thousands of years), it was broken down into the most basic and barbaric terms—no philosophy to it. But within the context of this proxy war over Korea, one of competing but similar ideologies, the American people were hard at work delineating and differentiating the finer points of either theory’s doctrines.

Ludwig would try to allay his profound inability to comprehend American thought processes through examining them under a scientific lense, which usually took the form of informal psychological discourses with Wilhelm on the idealized American mind. This was really unscientific for any number of reasons, and Ludwig understood that—but the point was never really to figure out the inner workings of the American mind. It was to help two frightened men feel some measure of control over something that they felt was hostile to them.

Wilhelm and Ludwig both had an interest of psychology, though only Ludwig found it’s clinical aspects intriguing. Wilhelm concentrated his studies of it into the Jungian school, and generally only followed psychology for, what he called, it’s peculiar habit of reiterating what many ancient thinkers had already discerned (albeit in more primitive ways than the ancients, ironically). Ludwig, though, found every facet of the relatively new science enthralling, and spent much of his free time away from physics studying it.

Ludwig threw the butt of his smoked cigarette into the street and stamped it out. Now he found himself just outside Wilhelm’s own modest suburban domicile, where he lived with his young new wife. Ludwig strolled up and knocked at the door, which the woman herself soon answered.

In an oozingly saccharine Southern drawl, she said, “Hey, Ludwig. Come on in; Willy’s in his den.” Andrea Vanderquack (née L’Estrange) was an intelligent young American duck, of Norman extraction but whose family had been living America’s South for more than a few generations. She originally came from the vieux riche, but when her parents learned she was quitting her education to marry an ex-nazi scientist almost seven years her elder, she was disinherited (something which seemed to irk Wilhelm to no end). When asked jokingly by Ludwig how he tricked Andrea into marrying him, Wilhelm hinted that he used some manner of hypnosis or mesmerism he learned in his magical studies to make her love him. Whether he was also being facetious, or stone-facedly sincere, Ludwig couldn’t ascertain. Wilhelm could be funny that way.

“Thank you, Andrea,” smiled Ludwig, before he stepped inside. Mrs. Vanderquack backed away and turned toward the kitchen, from whence wafts of Wilhelm’s brunch cooking could be smelled, and Ludwig spied Andrea’s swollen, pregnant belly. As she waddled back to finish cooking, he stepped through the hall and up the stairs to Wilhelm’s study, which his wife so quaintly (and dismissively) called a den. He knocked at the door twice and opened it immediately after, finding his old comrade sat in an oversized bergère, reading some obscure french grimoire.

“Ludwig, mein bruder, it’s always good to see you,” Wilhelm stood up and they both smiled and hugged, pecking one another on either cheek as they would have in the old country, the same way they always greeted one another.

“And you, mein Wilhelm! Or should I say, Willy?” Ludwig teased, and Wilhelm pulled away from the embrace just enough to look him in the face with a hard, serious expression.

“Has she been calling me that again?” Wilhelm asked under his breath, before he broke their hug to close the door to his study. “I hate it when she does that.”

Ludwig sauntered up to the chaise lounge Wilhelm kept in the study and sprawled out on it, the way he usually did, and Wilhelm returned to his own chair. Around the study, in addition to Wilhelm’s small private library on philosophy and mysticism, were recent scientific journals and the duo’s own works on cosmology unceremoniously bound with staples and paperclips. When not working on applied physics projects for the rockets, Ludwig and Wilhelm would still collaborate on works based in more theoretical branches of physics, from general relativity to quantum mechanics, the same as they did in Witzenhausen. This earned them some repute within certain scientific circles, but little recognition otherwise. They both hoped, though, that in time they’d have put together a body of work substantial enough to earn them positions in higher education—so they could get away from engineering rockets.

“Did you read that psychological journal I gave you the other day? The pages I marked?” Wilhelm asked, crossing his legs.

“On the ‘little professors’? Yes, I read it, and found it edifying.” Ludwig replied, trying to figure how to get onto what was bothering him.

Wilhelm, sensing his dear friend’s ulterior motive, smiled and advanced with, “Autistic psychopathy, is what Herr Doctor Asperger called it. But my real reason for giving it to you was to show that, even though it was work done by an Austrian in forty-four, it’s still been printed in an American psychology journal.”

Ludwig’s shoulders dropped and his apprehension with them. Only Wilhelm had this power to see past him that way. “Danke…” Is all Ludwig could say, and a few moments passed before he continued, venturing, “But were you listening to the radio this morning?”

Wilhelm sank back into the cushy upholstery of his chair, already prepared, and answered, “No, but I imagine they said something about the holocaust.”

Ludwig winced at the word. “Y-yes! And it’s all they talk about!”

Wilhelm sat up. “Ludwig, y-”

Ludwig interrupted, already stuttering from frustration. “They don’t-! Wilhelm, they don’t understand! And that’s one thing, but they don’t want to understand, they don’t care what it was really all about—a-about Kant, and Nietzsche a-and Schopenhauer, a-and-”

“It isn’t their place to understand,” Wilhelm said, calmly, and waited for a response that never came. When it was obvious his answer had stunned Ludwig into silence, he continued, “Ludwig, amoralism as the practical evolution of the Nietzschean transvaluation of values, or Zarathustra casting the dwarf from his shoulder, or however else you’d like to explain and justify it all wouldn’t mean anything to them. They aren’t like you or I, and that’s what lies at the heart of your anger.”

“You’re right, Wilhelm, you’re right,” affirmed Ludwig, as though he had some salient point he was about to address. “But I never asked for them to capture me and ship me here, I never asked to have my home destroyed-”

“No, Ludwig,” Wilhelm interrupted, standing up. “I don’t mean that you’re not like them because you’re Austrian, or even an ex-Nazi. By ‘them’ I don’t mean the Americans,” Wilhelm crossed his arms, and Ludwig was dumbstruck, so he continued. “Ludwig, nevermind the Americans, or even the vultures, how many _Germans_ do you think understood Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, or any of the philosophical reasons behind the movement? How many of them totally disregarded all the high and lofty notions the lay behind the war? How many were only in it to cause strife, or for material gain?” said Wilhelm, before he realized he was getting sidetracked.

Wilhelm saw, though, that Ludwig was still enthralled, so he uncrossed his arms and stepped closer to his friend. “The point is, Ludwig, all your pain and anguish is very real, but I know you, and you aren’t a sore loser. This isn’t about losing the war, or coming to America. You’re only using it all as a proxy for your own feelings.” Wilhelm bent down and set his hands on Ludwig’s shoulders and looked into his eyes, saying, “It isn’t that Americans refuse to understand our German Idealist philosophy, it’s that you _people_ refuse to understand _you._ You’ve always told me how you feel so alienated by society, even before we came to America.”

Ludwig sat there, befuddled, and could only stare into Wilhelm’s steel blue eyes. Eventually, Ludwig had to look away, and Wilhelm continued, “The end of the war was… painful for all of us, and that pain is also real, but this is a different animal, my dear brother. I’ve faced it too, you know.” There was a long silence afterward, and Wilhelm eventually stepped back.

“T-thank you, Wilhelm. I think you’re right,’ said Ludwig, sitting up in the chaise lounge. “My Matilda, she doesn’t understand me. And she doesn’t try. No one does. Only you understand, but I don’t think anyone understands you, either.”

“You’re a genius, mein Ludwig,” said Wilhelm, laying across the arms of his chair. He smirked, “and we’re two-of-a-kind.” They both chuckled lightly. “Really, though, there are so many… philosophical problems with saying any one person can understand another, and yet it seems so obvious when we experience it. You have to realize that no one will really understand you, the true you, but we have ways to deal with it.”

“How is that, Wilhelm?” asked Ludwig.

“Take me, for instance,” he grinned, “I cultivate an air of such arrogance and entitlement around my genius that it intoxicates me, and I don’t care anymore if anyone understands.” Wilhelm tepidly laughed, and Ludwig realized this was one of those times he couldn’t tell whether or not Wilhelm was joking. “But you, Ludwig, you’re too humanitarian for my methods. Too eager to have the people embrace you. You walk a more difficult path. You, I think, have to find a way to diminish yourself, until you appear simple enough that they can comprehend, and sense the real genius underneath, in their own way.”

“Thank you, Wilhelm,” said Ludwig, still slightly dazed, though he wasn’t sure why. “I’ll think on this.”

“If _I’m_ incorrect, I am sure _you_ can find the answer,” Wilhelm sat up. “Andrea should be serving brunch soon, would you like to stay and dine with us?” he asked, before setting one leg on the other and recanting, “On second thought, maybe you’d like to be heading home soon. God only knows what she’s cooked up for me this time. I’m a brave man, but...”

Ludwig paused for a moment, expressionless, then smirked, “No, I’m sure it isn’t as bad as you say—I’ve heard so much about your wife’s cooking, I must experience it. Do you think she’ll, uh,” he began chortling, “Do you think she’ll serve you pork brains again?”

Wilhelm didn’t find it as amusing. “You know, she calls that stuff ‘soul food,’” he said, “But when I eat it, I fear for mine.” Ludwig’s polite chortle became real laughter, and Wilhelm smiled at it.


End file.
